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Apple Reverses G4 downgrade
puck13 writes "According to MacInTouch "Apple has reversed the cancellation of existing Power Mac G4 orders, according to impeccable sources, and is calling back customers to explain. The Apple Store will honor existing orders for the previous configurations at the previous prices. People who ordered the G4/500 model that cannot be produced due to Motorola's production issues, will be offered a choice of the original G4/450 configuration at the original price or a discount on their G4/500 configuration, as if it had been ordered custom-built with a 450-MHz processor selected. " Check out yesterday's story for more information.
I can't believe how many people are willing to fly off the handle without understanding what they're talking about.
Major points:
When the G4 first came out, the 400mhz version was the only one available. But it was not much more than a G3 in G4's clothing. This "low-end" G4 had a G4 CPU, and a G4 casing, but the motherboard was basically a G3. This motherboad is codenamed "Yikes." The "real" G4s use a motherboard called "Sawtooth." With this motherboard, you get:
The old G4/400 has none of this. So although the G4/400 started out life as a Yikes based machine (a revamped G3), Apple just graduated it to a Sawtooth machine overnight, with significant enhancements. As such, the price increase is actually justified, particuarly when taking into account the RAM issue.
So whoever preorded a G4/400 prior to all this is probably going to get much more than they originally bargained for -- at no additional cost.
- Scott
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Scott Stevenson
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
After I read the Macintouch article I called Apple to see if they were really going to uncancel my order (placed early last month.) They weren't sure, but said I might be one of the "lucky ones" whose orders had already been sent into production.
Doesn't sound like much of a reversal to me, if everybody who ordered after mid-September is still sh!t out of luck.
There's nothing like massive consumer & media backlash to make someone change their mind, huh?
But the fact that they seriously thought that they could get away with it really bothered me. "Oh hey, we're Apple so you know that G4 400 that we said was going to cost you $1600? Well now that's gonna be a 350. But you can still get the 400 for $2,500 if you want." Total insanity. At least they got wise. I guess they banked on the fact that the Macintosh faithful are probably some of the most loyal consumers out there and thought that they could ream them just a little bit more.
I can't believe I'm saying this but - Way to go angry Mac users!
Pete
Pete
The sole purpose of the Internet is to get porn and bomb making plans into the hands of children.
ok.. so apple makes a kind of bad decision that annoys some of its customers. by 24 hours later, it has realized its mistake, listented to its customers, and done something rather nice to everyone who had ordered a 450 model. (in the process giving up quite a bit of money..)
/. posting about some mistake apple made, and then suddenly they're experts..
after apple makes the mistake, slashdot is flooded with people flaming apple. Apple is arrogant, apple is screwing its customers, apple is nonresponsive, apple is self-destructive and stupid. Almost none of these people posting were affected in any way by the order cancellations. The people posting who _were_ affected were just kind of calmly shrugged it off.
so now that apple has actually _listened to its customers_.. what happens? do the slashdot posters come back and appologize for being too hasty to flame? well, no. instead what we get is.. more apple bashing. people say "well it's a good thing apple is doing this", and then immediately go right on with the flaming. Mostly saying the exact same thing they were after yesterday's article. What is this? How many other companies would _do_ this? If compaq cancelled a bunch of orders and said "i'm sorry, we can't fufill these, you'll have to reorder".. would _they_ have listened to any customer complaints? (Compaq being a hypothetical example.. i've never dealt with them)
Oh, and btw i think i can say with almost absoloute certainty that apple did _not_ make the decision to give discounts to the people who had originally ordered 500s based on anything related in any way to slashdot. And the downgrade wasn't covered by any other "media" sources except macintouch/macnn. Apple based what they did on customer feedback..
meanwhile, other people in the current thread are complaining that apple effectively raised the prices for people who are going to buy new G4s after that. um, so? are you going to be buying a G4? if not why are you complaining? shouldn't apple have the right to charge what they like, especially if (because of rising DRAM prices) it is costing them more to make the product then it was awhile back? it's amazing the people who don't care about or pay attention to apple _at all_.. except when there's a
there are times when slashdot is full of interesting people with great technical knowledge and a willingness to share it, and informed insights on the thing being spoken on. These times almost never occur if apple's involved in some way. oh well. i'm done ranting now.
-mcc-baka
(this message sent from LinuxPPC r5)
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
I haven't read through the whole discussion here, so please excuse me if this is has already been said. I just feel the point needs to be made!
When Apple decided to charge the 500MHz price for the 450MHz system, they also threw in 128MB of RAM--for free--to compensate. At current prices, that just about makes up the original cost difference between the 500MHz and 450MHz model.
From MacNN:
Let me say that I'm not condoning Apple's handling of this matter. They should have contacted the affected customers via, first, email, and then if no response within 48 hours, telephone, asking them if they wanted to "trade" 50MHz for 128MB of RAM added to their system. As it is now, Apple can't deliver the 500MHz chips; if they'd asked their customers if they would be willing to trade MHz for MB, I'm positive that the reaction on Slashdot would have been damned near positive!
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Am I the only one who thinks Microsoft is a misnomer? Perhaps Macrosoft would be a better fit?
If this is one of the things holding you back, then you may have made a very foolish decision.
First of all, when was the last time you needed a certain clock rate? Are you trying to listen to your computer on the radio, and your radio only receives the 500-600 MHz bands? Isn't it enough that the Macs have already met and exceeded the performance you can get with Intel machines?
As for price, I can see your point and have sympathy. But keep in mind that a lot of people who buy Intel machines also end up using Microsoft software, thereby getting trapped in the annual or biannual software rental process (a.k.a. the "upgrade path"). For most people (granted, I'm not counting the Linux users), Macs are cheaper than their Intel counterparts. One of the reasons that the Mac appears so expensive at first is that they come bundled with an OS that you have to mostly pay for "up front".
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
1 - OS X will ship when it's ready. Do you want them to pull a Microsoft and ship it sooner and then augment it with service packs to get it to a useable state?
2 - Apples just not large enough to offer a wide variety of video cards... They commit to buying all their chips from ATI and presumably get a huge discount because of that...
3 - I have to agree with that... Those keyboards suck
4 - Is a non-issue... Only someone that has no idea as to how the innards work and that is resistant to having it explained would really request this. If Apple can achieve equivilant performance with 1/2 the MHz, what do i care?
5 - I haven't seen Sherlock 2 yet (OS 9 apparently kills ATM, and i can't have that!) but let apple do whatever they want with their bundled apps... It's not terribly difficult to develope a quicktime player using Apple's API's and overlaying an interface of your choice on top of it.
The problem for Apple is that they aren't likely to ever attract a significant number of new customers until they change their business practices.
That is a rather fanstastic assertion given the fact of the matter is that 50% of iMac sales are first time Apple customers.